Gifted

A long, long time ago, my local school did IQ tests on everyone.

If you scored really well, you got put into the "gifted" program, which was a "work at your own pace" kind of deal and I started it in 4th grade.

Except for math, I was doing 7th grade level stuff by the end of 5th grade.  I was still at 4th grade for math.

Then my parents divorced.

The school in my mom's parents hometown, where we relocated, didn't have a gifted program, so I was put into classes with my age group.

6th grade.

I complained bitterly that I'd already absorbed this material and I was bored out of my fucking mind.

But I KNEW the material and it was easy to get A's without doing any work.  So I stopped doing work.

I was fine until we moved again and I started 7th grade.

I'd forgotten how to do the work.

My grades plummeted, though I did finally manage to "get" math.

By the time I'd relearned how to learn, I got dumped onto my father and into a school that was two years of being bullied for being the outsider.

But now I knew how to learn again, but I didn't learn the classes.  I learned how the school itself worked.  That makes it a lot easier to get over on the teacher.

At the very end of living with my dad, I also learned how to deal with bullies.

Just in time to move back to Mom's and teach the bullies who'd forgotten me while I was away...

The Iowa schools were so much easier to game than the Minnesota schools too.

Simple things like spotting that the detention teacher doesn't know you're supposed to be there unless you take the slip from the office to them.  And the office trusted me to do so.  As long as the teacher that put you into detention didn't spot you and remember you...  It was a period of doing anything I wanted.

It should be noted that none of my clever machinations did a thing to help my grades.

I was a C average student leaving High School, and I didn't care because I was going into the Army and not college.

And, having blown the curve on the ASVAB, I selected combat arms.

If I ever get a time machine I am taking young McThag out behind the woodshed and beating some sense into him and forcing him to change his MOS to something useful outside the military.  And erasing my existence, I am sure.